7/29/2019 Cantor Isaac Nathan, the instigator of Byron's Hebrew
Melodies as an early source of Robert Browning's poetry
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Robert Browning destroyed almost all his earliest poetry. This
could be a symptom of an anxiety ofinfluence. This articles
attempts to uncover a possible source of influence instigated by
the man whopersuaded Byron to write Hebrew Melodies.
A discussion of a mediating influence between Byron and
Browning
HOW A YOUNG POET FOUND HIS FEET
Did Isaac Nathan Provide a Channel of Influence Between Byron
and Robert Browning?
It is perhaps one of those quirks of literary history that the
same man who prevailed on Lord Byron to write Hebrew
Melodies (1815) was later to become the music tutor of a great
Victorian poet, Robert Browning. Isaac Nathan, the
son of the then cantor of the Canterbury synagogue suggested to
Lord Byron that he write a number of lyrics to the
accompaniment of certain Jewish melodies purportedly dating from
the days of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is difficult
to imagine that Nathan, never one given to false modesty, did
not recall in glowing terms his former association with
Byron to impress his pupil, then aged thirteen or fourteen. If,
as one has good reason to suppose, young Browning
practised his singing on some of the poems in Hebrew Melodies,
Byron's poetry might well have provided him with a
powerful impulse to write his own verses. If that was the case,
why did Browning pay almost no tribute to Byron as a
source of inspiration although he as a young man spoke and wrote
with effusive praise about the genius of Shelley?
At least in one passage of literary criticism we may find a hint
pointing to Byron's possible influence on Browning's
poetry. In the second section entitled "Byronic Lyrics for
David's Harp" of his monograph Byron's Hebrew Melodies,
Thomas L. Ashton refers to "Herod's Lament to Mariamne" as the
precursor of [Robert Browning's] "Porphyria'sLover,".(1) Thus, if
only by way of a passing reference, a connection is discerned
between Byron and Robert Browning,
who published what later became known as "Porphyria's Lover" in
1836. Together with another poem, later entitled
"Johannes Agricola in Meditation" "Porphyria's Lover" shared the
title of "Madhouse Cells" I and II.
The absence of any admission by Browning of a debt to Byron's
influence might at first suggest that there was none,
but we have at least one good reason for not jumping to this
conclusion. Experiencing what Harold Bloom describes as
an "anxiety of influence", (2) Browning obliterated almost all
traces of his Juvenilia work Incondita, and the only two
poems to survive the poet's destructive hand "The First-born of
Egypt" and "The Dance of Death" betray a strongly
Byronic tone, as I hope to demonstrate in the ensuing
paragraph.
The two surviving poems, which reveal Browning's early almost
morbid obsession with death and the death of theyoung in
particular, contain echoes of lines and word patterns found in
Byron's "The Destruction of Semnacherib".
This, like "The First-born of Egypt" is based on themes and
narratives in the Bible in which the Angel of Death appears
as a central motif. In both these poems the colors of gold and
purple repeatedly suggest the vainglorious aspirations of
oriental despots before being thwarted by the intervention of
the Lord of Hosts. In themselves, this evidence and the
probability that Browning was strongly influenced by Byron's
verse in his first Period of artistic experimentation could
well be dismissed as matters of mere "academic" interest unless
pertinent arguments can be adduced to support the
proposition that Byron's early encounter with Byron's verse
through the mediation of Isaac Nathan lent form and
direction to indwelling propensities that should in time pervade
Browning's entire poetic work. I argue that this was
indeed the case for the reasons stated in the following
paragraphs.
I begin by drawing attention to three entwined motifs in Hebrew
Melodies, which I term for the sake of convenience:
Hebraism, the psychology of anguish and music. (3) In "My Soul
Is Dark", a dramatic monologue in which Saul
implores the minstrel David to play his harp and so free him
from a mood of deep depression, all these strands come
together, for here music reveals its therapeutic power in
assuaging the evil spirit that befell the first king of Israel.
In
Browning's second version of "Saul", in Men and Women, the music
produced by David's harp leads to an act of
7/29/2019 Cantor Isaac Nathan, the instigator of Byron's Hebrew
Melodies as an early source of Robert Browning's poetry
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spiritual apprehension that transcends the power of song and
music altogether. Music leads the aspiring human spirit
beyond, or rather higher, than a reality described by words, an
idea implied by the term "a psalm of ascent". Very
much the same notion comes to the fore in line 52 in "Abt
Vogler" - "that out three sounds he frame, not a fourth
sound, but a star". Even in so "trivial" a poem as "The Pied
Piper of Hamelin" the transcending powers of music are
also implied by the fact that this poem's most lyrical passage
demonstrates the effect the Piper's music had on the
lame child who witnessed its sound yet remained unable to follow
the Piper to a `promised' land.
Some poems in Hebrew Melodies present the point of view of those
traumatised by deep mental anguish. Herod and
Jephtha are haunted by their remorse at having caused the death
of either a beloved wife or a beloved daughter. Thepsychological
plight of these victims of mental affliction finds a parallel in
Browning's poetry in "Porphyria's Lover" and
"My Last Duchess". The theme of the Jewish exile from their
spiritual homeland is a strong element in Hebrew
Melodies as it is in a number of Browning's poems that include
"Holy-Cross Day", "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and even "Pisgah
Sights I / II" depicting the deep sorrow of Moses at the end of
his life, when aware that he may only behold the
Promised Land in his life's final vision without enjoying the
privilege of entering that land in person.
The presentation of a traumatised or erratic point of view
concerns poetic form as well as subject matter. Byron
pioneered the dramatic monologue, a genre combining the
confessional element of intensely lyrical poetry with the
objectivity of a dramatic characterization. Browning developed,
and arguably perfected, this style of monologue in such
poems as "My Last Duchess", "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Soliloquy of
the Spanish Cloister".
That music is the great reconciler aesthetically as well as
spiritually and psychologically is suggested by the very title
of Hebrew Melodies. The inclusion of a poem such as "She Walks
in Beauty" can hardly be justified in terms of its
obvious relevance to biblical or Hebrew themes. Byron defended
its inclusion by asserting that it was in keeping with
the overriding spirit of the Melodies - i.e. through an
association of feelings as experienced by those subject to the
effects of great music. Similarly, in Browning's poetry the
General title Bells and Pomegranates, which from 1841 until
1846 served as the heading of a seemingly odd array of poems
lacking a recognizable common theme, suggests
much the same assimilative power of association and its affinity
to music. (4)
It may be more than a mere coincidence that Byron, Nathan and
Browning themselves yielded to the wandering
impulse so clearly reflected in their poetry and music. All left
England never to return. Byron voiced his farewell to his
homeland in the celebrated words he ascribed to Childe Harold as
he departed from Albion's shores. Browning
vacillated between his periods of residence in England and
Italy, where he spent his happy married years after his
wife's Romantic elopement and release from virtual captivity
under the authority of her tyrannical Victorian father. After
his wife's death Browning returned to England, but, as fate
would have it, he died in Venice surrounded by the works of
art and architecture that had so greatly fascinated him. Nathan
left England for the Antipodes and made a significant
contribution to the establishment a distinct national tradition
of music in Australia. As artists, all three men, in their
various ways, identified themselves with people's and nations
that were gaining a new awareness of their cultural
heritage and were sooner or later to assert their political
sovereignty, whether we speak of Greece with regard to
Byron, Italy with regard to Browning and Australia, and perhaps
even Israel, in the case of Nathan. Until well into the
1860s the poems in Byron's Hebrew Melodies were sung at concerts
and performances to the accompaniment of
Nathan's music and were particularly popular in Jewish circles,
strengthening nascent hopes for a return to the land of
the Bible.
References
1) Thomas L. Ashton, Byron's Hebrew Melodies , Austin, 1972
2) Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence . New York, 1975.
3) Judith Berlin-Lieberman, Robert Browning and Hebraism ,
(Diss. Zurich; Jerusalem: Ariel Press, 1934).
4) "Bells and Pomegranates" alludes to the garment worn by the
chief priest when entering the Holy of Holies. To thehem of this
garment were attached golden bells and ornaments representing
pomegranates, which the Rabbis took to
imply that pleasure and singing were essential elements in
divine ministry.and poetic inspiration. (See:Browning's letter
to Elizabeth Barratt of October 18, 1845).
